Tape and Glue
by valbino
Summary: ItaSaku if you squint. AU. Character study. A chance meeting sparks an unexpected friendship. Oneshot.


AN: This is a oneshot. Mostly a character study-ish type dealio. Just an idea that cropped up in my head the other day and it seemed like a good idea at the time. Hopefully the ideas and emotions I got from it will be conveyed effectively here.

Enjoy!

000

"Hey!"

He glanced at the pink-haired girl who had sat at his table. She poked him in the shoulder.

"I'm Sakura," she said. "What's your name?"

He made a noncommittal noise, pushed the food around on his tray. She didn't seem to mind all that much; she shrugged and settled herself in the seat across from him. There was an assortment of craft materials she thunked onto the table: paper, glitter, glue, markers. Astonishingly, there was a pair of scissors. He had thought they weren't allowed here.

"I like to make things...What about you?" She smiled a little, then glanced down. Perhaps at the craft supplies in front of her.

Briefly, he considered saying something about art projects being useless in coping with whatever the hell landed you in _here._ But she once again continued talking like he had replied.

"I bet you'd be pretty good at stuff like that. You have long fingers," she said, pointed at his hand not holding a utensil.

Her green eyes were ringed with dark circles, he noticed. Maybe her cheeriness was drug-induced. Maybe it was real. Nobody had actually been particularly charitable in this place, much less towards him. She was a small reprieve, this Sakura girl.

As if he had told her something, she began to fiddle around with a marker and a red piece of paper. Then she picked up the scissors and cut out whatever she had drawn. Then she took a yellow piece of paper and then a blue one, using the same process on them. Then she took the bottle of glue—simple white glue, he noticed—and daubed a little on the blue and yellow scraps. Then she attached them to the red one. When she held it up, he was a little confused. The red and yellow took up approximately equal fourths, and then blue covered the rest.

"This is me," she said, pointing at the yellow shape. "This is you." She pointed at the red part. "This is the sky." She pointed at the blue. "I like the sky. Do you like the sky?"

He didn't reply, but decided to chance a nod.

Sakura went on. "I think everybody does. It's blue and there are birds and clouds. My mom told me, before she died, that when you see beams of light streaming through the clouds, it means somebody went to Heaven. Wouldn't that be nice?"

There was definitely something off about her, he finally decided. The smile took on a frozen shape. Her hair was cropped above her shoulders, and stuck out in different directions. His own hair was left long, and had grown past a comfortable length. Again, she didn't seem to mind his silence. Perhaps she didn't notice it.

A question lingered on his mind: _How did your mother die?_ But he did not dare to ask it. It could be the reason she wound up in this place, rather than out and about doing whatever on Earth it was girls did. Either way, it was pleasant to not have somebody demanding answers from him, or trying to pry more than one-word answers out of him when he did. It was pleasant not feeling invaded by someone's presence.

He watched as she took some glue and placed a drop onto her index finger. She then spread it around on the blue portion of her 'project' before sprinkling a bit of glitter on it.

"Now it's raining," she said. "It was raining when she died. My dad's okay I think. He sleeps an awful lot though. What about your parents? What were they like? I bet they were nice."

Part of him wanted to tell her to _shut the fuck up_. Another part wanted desperately to ask about how her mother died; he was beginning to suspect it was due to illness or murder. And there was that large, enormously large, part of him that shut down as soon as his parents were brought into the picture. Sakura seemed to sense that, and quickly changed the subject.

"I bet you're a nice person. You're awfully quiet though."

The thought of being a nice person seemed laughable to him. She went on:

"Sometimes I'm awfully quiet, too. It's okay." She smiled again. "I don't mind. It's nice having someone to talk to."

For a few minutes, silence prevailed. Sakura messed around with her project. He moved the food around with his fork and watched. She had taken a black marker and drawn faces on the red and yellow parts. The red fourth had two dots for eyes and no mouth, with black on the sides to represent his hair. The yellow had two circles with eyelashes drawn, and a smile for the mouth.

"See? The red one's you and the yellow one's me. Do you like it?"

For the first time, he decided to answer her. "You didn't give me a mouth," he whispered, moving his empty hand from the table to point at it. "Why?"

"O-oh! It was because I'm not really sure what you're like." She seemed surprised he had spoken. "You seem...sad."

"Sad?" he murmured.

"Did your mother die, too? It's okay if you don't wanna talk about it. But they told me I should. It's supposed to....what did they say...help." She began to act again like he hadn't spoken, and her smile was gone. "But I like to make pictures."

"...You make nice pictures." In a way, they really were to him.

"Th-thank you." Her well-chewed nails flitted around the project. "I bet you would, too, if you tried."

A thought occurred to him. "How long have you been here?"

"Umm...a...month? Maybe? What about you?"

"Six," he whispered. "Six months..."

"I'm sorry."

They lapsed into a silence again. He glanced around the cafeteria. There weren't very many people left in the room. Lunch hour was almost over, then. Soon, they would part ways. He was not looking forward to the so-called therapy they put him through. Injections and pills and prying questions did no good to his failing mental health. He wondered what they did to her. Maybe they didn't poke at her body as well as her mind. Maybe they only asked questions and tried to distract her enough so she'd spill the beans.

"_Do_ you want to make something?"

He nodded, reverting back to his usual silence. Wouldn't hurt. He pushed aside his tray (an aide swooped by and picked it up, obviously waiting for him to be done) and pulled some of the paper and markers to be more within reach. He doubted the scissors were particularly sharp, but didn't want this precious time taken away by overly paranoid aides. With a bit of consideration, he brought the glue and glitter closer to him as well.

As he slowly worked on his own project, he felt her watching as he folded a rectangular sheet of green paper, then creased a portion of it before tearing it off to make a square. Then he took a blue marker and made a couple of dots here and there. With deep concentration, he began to fold the paper into a crane. He had almost forgotten how.

Several minutes later—and only two or three left in the lunch time—he placed the little paper crane in front of her. The dots he had made with the marker became the eyes. She looked at it with a smile. Maybe the first real one she had cracked in several weeks.

"You can have it," he murmured.

"Thank you!" Sakura glanced at the large digital clock on the far wall. "Um, I think we'll have to go soon. But you can keep this." And she pushed her project in his direction.

Right on cue, an aide took Sakura by the arm and told her that she should probably be going, shooting a nervous glance at him. Knowing that once she was around the corner he may or may not see her again, he spoke after her.

"My name is Itachi, Sakura."

She turned her head to look at him, smiled, and mouthed that she heard him. Then she was around the corner.


End file.
